About 125 people attended the three-hour forum at the Arnone Elementary School Tuesday night – the first of its kind in Brockton since the recent opiate epidemic was uncovered three years ago. School Committee members and Superintendent Matthew Malone heard from parents of children lost to drugs, recovering addicts and concerned community members.

City resident Larry Curtis fought back tears as he made a request during a school drug forum Tuesday: pray for my son.

Curtis, whose 23-year-old son is a heroin addict, was among the 15 people who spoke passionately to the School Committee about the need to do more in the schools to prevent youth opiate drug addiction.

Others who spoke had their own requests.

“We need to get a drug and alcohol counselor, and we need to start educating these kids at a young age,” said Scott Fitzgerald, 22, a former Brockton High student who said he’s been clean from heroin and OxyContin addiction for more than two years.

About 125 people attended the three-hour forum at the Arnone Elementary School Tuesday night – the first of its kind in Brockton since the opiate epidemic was uncovered three years ago.

School Committee members and Superintendent Matthew Malone heard from parents of children lost to drugs, recovering addicts and concerned community members.

The forum was initiated by Ward 5 School Committee member Bill Carpenter, whose 21-year-old son is in recovery from opiate drug addiction.

“Parents are not looking for someone else to do their job for them, parents are looking for some help to do their job,” he said.

Malone, who took over as superintendent last fall, and School Committee members signaled that they are prepared to provide more help.

Malone said he is committed to opening a “recovery high school” – which incorporates a 12-step addiction recovery program – in Brockton. The school would be the fourth in the state and the first of its kind south of Boston.

“We want Brockton to lead the way,” said Malone, to applause from the crowd, saying he has already started investigating the idea and hopes to open the school by as early as September.

Linda Desisto was one of several parents of former Brockton High students lost to an overdose. She, like several other parents, brought a framed photograph of their child that sat on the table as they spoke.

“She had a good future, she really did,” said Desisto, whose daughter, Shannah Duggan, was pregnant when she died from a heroin overdose in 2005 at age 19.

George Fiske said he never knew his son was using heroin until it was too late. His son, Lance Patrick Fiske, 22, succumbed to a heroin overdose last August in his family home after battling the addiction for several years.

Fiske urged school officials to do what it takes to find the money for a drug counselor.

“When people are dying, cost is nothing,” he said.

Many who spoke said students need to be able to speak with someone who has personally recovered from a drug addiction, and urged officials to hire someone with that experience to work in the schools.

Page 2 of 2 - Ted Pratt, whose 20-year-old son died from a heroin overdose in 2005, suggested the schools teach kids ways to help each other stay off drugs.

“If they teach each other to get high, then they can teach each other to stay sober and clean,” Pratt said.

Those in attendance also heard a rousing address from state Sen. Steven Tolman, D-Boston, chairman of the state OxyContin and Heroin Commission.

At times shouting, Tolman blasted pharmaceutical companies and the FDA for the existence of OxyContin, a prescription painkiller that has hooked many young people on opiates.

“It’s not a gateway to heroin, it’s a rocket ship,” he said, later calling the youth opiate drug crisis “the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

The Enterprise’s two series, “Wasted Youth” and “Deadly Surge,” exposed the epidemic of OxyContin and heroin use in the Brockton region and the need for more programs to educate young people on the dangers of drug abuse. The series chronicled how more than 156 died in this region in one four-year span.

The state has since done its own study, and last year the Department of Public Health confirmed the epidemic, reporting that at least 3,200 died from 2002 to 2007. The study concluded that opiate overdose is now the leading cause of death in the state for adults under age 25.

David Morrison, a recovering heroin addict who has a daughter at Brockton High, said he is glad school officials now seem poised to act, but noted the problem “has been out there for a long time.